Johannes Stark, Jews, and Nature

[leblon]

In 1938, after Johannes Stark (the discoverer of the "Stark effect", Nobel Prize 1919) published an article about Jews in physics in the official SS newspaper "Das Schwarze Korps", the editors of the journal "Nature" invited him to write an opinion column. This resulted in one of the most amazing articles ever published in "Nature": "The Pragmatic and Dogmatic Spirit in Physics", Nature 141, p. 770 (138). One can read it here.  

Although this article was published before Kristallnacht took place, April 1938 was already after all Jews were fired from government jobs in Germany (including all university jobs), after Jews were prohibited from attending universities in Germany, and after Jews were prohibited from having sexual relationship with "Aryans". And Stark was the person in charge of cleansing German physics from Jews. I cannot imagine what the editors of "Nature" were thinking.

After World War II, Johannes Stark was convicted by a denazification court to four years in prison, but his sentence was suspended. 

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

What I find funny is how he connected quantum physics and relativity to Marxism, quite opposite to what Lenin was promoting.

I guess both this guy, as well as Lenin, did contribute to slowing down the research that led to the atomic bomb.

Seems like the same kind of discussion happens everywhere, all the time. In programming. In pure math. How many people believe that all math is based on set theory, and other abstractions should be abandoned? Most of them.

Just this morning I attended "Bohemian Cafe", where Jiry Rosicky was elaborating on what are the foundation required for the stuff (applicativity and free monads) that Haskell and other naive people assume as always available.

From the history point of view, these people may be useful.

[leblon]

Stark was a complete wacko. Lenard's writings are more reasonable (even though they seem to make very similar arguments). He was bemoaning that physics became too mathematical, and that theoretical physicists play with formulas at the expense of real understanding. Seems similar to what many physicists say now about string theorists and more mathematical theoretical physicists, doesn't it? If Lenard were not obsessed with Jews, he would sound very modern.

[leblon]

In any case, I don't think there is any parallel between Lenin and Stark. Lenin was much more pragmatic and did not try to expell bourgeois scientists.